We experimentally study the behavior of orbital angular momentum (OAM) of light in a noncollinear second harmonic generation (SHG) process. The experiment is performed by using a type I BBO crystal under phase matching conditions with femtosecond pumping fields at 830 nm. Two specular off-axis vortex beams carrying fractional orbital angular momentum at the fundamental frequency (FF) are used. We analyze the behavior of the OAM of the SH signal when the optical vortex of each input field at the FF is displaced from the beams axis. We obtain different spatial configurations of the SH field, always carrying the same zero angular momentum.
Optical vortices are currently one of the most intensively studied topics in optics. These light beams, which carry orbital angular momentum (OAM), have been successfully utilized in the visible and infrared in a wide variety of applications. Moving to shorter wavelengths may open up completely new research directions in the areas of optical physics and material characterization. Here, we report on the generation of extreme-ultraviolet optical vortices with femtosecond duration carrying a controllable amount of OAM. From a basic physics viewpoint, our results help to resolve key questions such as the conservation of angular momentum in highly-nonlinear light-matter interactions, and the disentanglement and independent control of the intrinsic and extrinsic components of the photons angular momentum at short-wavelengths. The methods developed here will allow testing some of the recently proposed concepts such as OAM-induced dichroism, magnetic switching in organic molecules, and violation of dipolar selection rules in atoms.
We theoretically and experimentally investigated transformations of vortex beams subjected to sector perturbations in the form of hard-edged aperture. The transformations of the vortex spectra, the orbital angular momentum, and the informational entropy of the perturbed beam were studied. We found that relatively small angular sector perturbations have almost no effect on OAM, although the informational entropy is rapidly increasing due to the birth of new optical vortices caused by diffraction by diaphragm edges. At large perturbation angles, the uncertainty principle between the angle and OAM involves vortices, with both positive and negative topological charges, so that the OAM decreases to almost zero, and the entropy increases sharply.
Light with spatiotemporal orbital angular momentum (ST-OAM) is a recently discovered type of structured and localized electromagnetic field. This field carries characteristic space-time spiral phase structure and transverse intrinsic OAM. In this work, we present the generation and characterization of the second-harmonic of ST-OAM pulses. We uncovered the conservation of transverse OAM in a second-harmonic generation process, where the space-time topological charge of the fundamental field is doubled along with the optical frequency. Our experiment thus suggests a general ST-OAM nonlinear scaling rule - analogous to that in conventional OAM of light. Furthermore, we observe that the topology of a second-harmonic ST-OAM pulse can be modified by complex spatiotemporal astigmatism, giving rise to multiple phase singularities separated in space and time. Our study opens a new route for nonlinear conversion and scaling of light carrying ST-OAM with the potential for driving other secondary ST-OAM sources of electromagnetic fields and beyond.
The interplay between spin and orbital angular momentum in the up-conversion process allows us to control the macroscopic wave front of high harmonics by manipulating the microscopic polarizations of the driving field. We demonstrate control of orbital angular momentum in high harmonic generation from both solid and gas phase targets using the selection rules of spin angular momentum. The gas phase harmonics extend the control of angular momentum to extreme-ultraviolet wavelength. We also propose a bi-color scheme to produce spectrally separated extreme-ultraviolet radiation carrying orbital angular momentum.
We present a method, based on noncollinear second harmonic generation, to evaluate the non-zero elements of the nonlinear optical susceptibility. At a fixed incidence angle, the generated signal is investigated by varying the polarization state of both fundamental beams. The resulting polarization charts allows to verify if Kleinman symmetry rules can be applied to a given material or to retrieve the absolute value of the nonlinear optical tensor terms, from a reference measurement. Experimental measurements obtained from Gallium Nitride layers are reported. The proposed method does not require an angular scan thus is useful when the generated signal is strongly affected by sample rotation